Why Connecticut's Jobs Machine Is Sputtering

December 07, 2012|Dan Haar

As the year draws to a close, Connecticut, more than most states, remains hostage to the fiscal cliff talks in Washington D.C. But even without that bit of Yuletide feuding, the jobs picture here is grimmer than just about anyplace as the nation as a whole marches ahead.

What's going on?

Outside the obvious fact that employers are treading water overall, the answer isn't entirely clear.

Connecticut lost 117,500 jobs from early 2008 to early 2010, but as of October it had replaced barely more than a quarter — half the recovery rate of the nation. The state unemployment rate has spiked to 9 percent, and although experts suspect that number is off somehow, it's certainly not going in the right direction.

Forecasters see another flat year in 2013, all the more perplexing since Connecticut started the recovery in 2010 and into 2011 outperforming our neighbors, and the nation. Happier days are predicted for 2014, largely because the nation is expected to be booming then.

Part of the issue is simply the specific mix of industries and companies in Connecticut: Defense firms had ramped up but now face headwinds from one round of Pentagon cutbacks and fears of still more. The big investment banks in New York and Stamford have slashed employees, hurting Fairfield County.

The casinos have stopped their deepest losses but are still shedding workers, and state and local government, usually pillars of stability, are letting jobs lost to retirement remain unfilled. Health insurers are retrenching ahead of Obamacare, and the largest Hartford-area property-casualty employer, The Hartford Financial Services Group, is in the midst of a selloff of businesses.

Housing, which of course dragged the nation into recession after collapsing in 2007, is coming back more slowly here than elsewhere in part because of lack of population growth. Big metro areas are hot and we don't have one of those, though we're trying to make our cities into destinations. .

Even in health care, "hospital mergers are slowing what was the strongest sector for growth," said Ed Deak, emeritus economics professor at Fairfield University.

Another issue could be that employers here are more spooked than employers in other states by the prospect of a fiscal cliff, or the likely fiscal slope, if the federal government in 2013 raises taxes on high-income earners — which Connecticut has in abundance — and cuts military spending, which affects us more than any other New England state.

"Does that warm the cockles of your expansion heart? No," said economist Nick Perna in Ridgefield.

Connecticut would be the third-hardest hit state in the fiscal cliff, not far behind No. 1 Michigan, according to Moody's Analytics. So even though the cliff effect hasn't happened yet and almost definitely won't happen in its worst form, it made sense that companies here would hold off on hiring and spending more than elsewhere in 2012.

Another issue is the cost of doing business, including taxes and energy. That explains why the Northeast lags the nation, not why Connecticut lags the Northeast. Some people, including Don Klepper-Smith of DataCore Partners in New Haven, say this state's high pension and debt liabilities affect confidence, making us worse off than even our neighbors.

Not a Career Year

In October, the latest month of released data, Connecticut actually had 0.2 percent fewer jobs than it did a year earlier, an alarming development three years after the end of a recession. Massachusetts, by contrast, was up by 1.3 percent, which would translate to 21,000 jobs in Connecticut. New York was up 1.5 percent, California up 2.1 percent and the nation, through November, was up 1.4 percent.

To put it in perspective, each percentage point in Connecticut is about 16,000 jobs, so a single company event can't typically move the needle by much. In the nation, a percentage point is 1.3 million jobs, slightly less than the total number of U.S. employees of Walmart.

Connecticut's unemployment rate stood at 9 percent in October, after a leap in the summer. The Northeast was at 8.4 percent and Massachusetts, 6.6 percent, also after a rise late in the year.

The U.S. jobless rate, meanwhile, pulled down to 7.7 percent in November, Friday's report showed. Some of the improvement in the national picture is for the "wrong" reasons as people stopped looking for work or took part-time jobs, but the numbers also show a reduction in the number of unemployed people — which we're not seeing in Connecticut.